7 Things You Need To Know About HPE Tech Pro Community

An Elite HPE Technical Community

HPE this week rolled out its Tech Pro Community as part of a stepped up offensive to drive more business outcome solutions selling with partners.

The Tech Pro Community global launch comes after the success of the program in the Asia Pacific Region which just celebrated the one year anniversary of its own Tech Pro Community with 1,000 members.

"It really helped our channel make the transition into value – solutions selling," said Brian Beneda, senior manager, global technical enablement for Hewlett Packard Enterprise of the Asia Pacific Tech Pro community. "We are seeing significant upticks in both revenue and pipeline around our value solutions portfolio as a result of the intimacy and engagement we have with the channel with this program."

Partners participating in the Tech Pro Community are seeing double digit growth in their value HPE solutions portfolio, said Beneda. That's because the HPE Tech Pro Community is raising the business outcome sales focus of solution provider presales architects, said Beneda.

In fact, the investment in the Tech Pro Community is giving more solution providers the ability to translate customer business objectives into higher value, software defined technology solutions, said Beneda.

"What we have done is bring the solution architects within the channel partner community on the same journey we are on from selling products to business outcomes," said Beneda. "We are using them as an extension of our sales force. We want to raise the level of enagement and intimacy for our solution provider technical community and give them the same exact training, certification, tools and resources that we use internally. They have the same exact access to HPE people, resources, expertise and content."

Tech Pro Community – One Community For Presales Solutions Excellence

Hewlett Packard Enterprise's Tech Pro Community follows through on HPE CEO Antonio Neri's (pictured) commitment to treat partners as an extension of the HPE sales team.

"We are using the same enablement, tools and technologies for our channel partners that we use internally," said Beneda. "That means making the internal tools we have available externally. It also means we are going to eat our own caviar by using the same exact partner certifications and training for our own internal presales organization. What that does is create a cross pollinated community so we can ramp up our co-selling efforts with the channel."

The Tech Pro Community is ramping up the collaboration between partner and HPE experts in both the presales and product division to leverage the "channel as a force multiplier and bring them along this journey with us as we move into the value market," said Beneda.

Building a full community experience is at the heart of the HPE Tech Pro Community intiative, said Beneda. "It is not just certification, events or online communities,"" he said. "It is the full 360 degree experience- everything a solution architect would need all in one place to make them as effective and as efficient as they can be in front of customers solving business outcomes."

A Focus On The Best of the Best Solution Architects

HPE is focusing on moving its 60,000 best of the best partner solution architects into the Tech Pro community.

"These are the deep technology experts that translate customer business requirements into technical solutions to achieve customer business outcomes," said Beneda. "They not only have technology skills, but they have got a set of business skills too. They translate back and forth between the business and technology worlds and they have deep intimacy across servers, storage and networking so they can do an end to end solution for customer."

Many of those best of the best solution architects have skills across many top technologies across server, storage and networking, said Beneda. "This is not a volume play," he said. "It's a value play."

A Better Education For Presales Solution Architects

HPE's Tech Pro Community is pushing solution architects across the channel community into the most explosive, innovation fueled market opportunities including intelligent edge and hybrid IT, said Beneda.

"We are focusing at the individual solution architect level to give them a reason to be excited about HPE innovation," said Beneda. "It's giving them a reason to align their career investment with HPE."

With the Tech Pro Community, HPE has moved from product certifications/training to business outcome architecture skills, said Beneda.

"We are bringing solution architecture skills based on the customer outcome and the application they want to deploy," he said. "It's about how do you platform that business outcome across server, network storage and management to build an end to end solution."

The business outcomes are aligned with HPE's Super 6 sales strategies focusing on a total $65 billion-plus market opportunity with six major transitions facing customers where partners can drive higher margins with more services revenue.

Those Super 6 sales opportunities are redefining the customer experience at the intelligent edge; helping customers determine the right mix of hybrid IT; storage to intelligent flash; unlocking data with artificial intelligence (AI); transforming IT with Software Defined and Everything as a Service.

A Business Outcome Focus That Breaks Beyond Traditional IT

The HPE Tech Pro Community is focused on directly addressing the new business outcome focused IT buyer.

The HPE Tech Pro initiative, in fact, provides solutions architects with the skill sets to focus squarely on those business requirements/outcomes and translate them into a solution beyond the traditional server, storage and networking silos.

"The real value for a solution architect from a professional career perspective as we move into a hybrid cloud, edge-centric and mobile enabled world is having the ability to look across the different technologies and solution ecosystems we can bring to the table," said Beneda. "It's about translating business requirements into a solution architecture and then working with the customer through the change management and deployment of that infrastructure. We are taking the customer on the journey to achieve the business outcome they want."

Ultimately, the new Tech Pro Community is aimed at aligning skill sets to the way customers are now buying IT, said Beneda. "It used to be customers had a server team, a storage team and a network team," he said. "What we are seeing is those technologies and groups are starting to come together. Customers are looking at this from a line of business perspective with a focus on the end to end technologies they need to support the applications for the line of business."

A New Hybrid IT Architect Accredited Solutions Expert (ASE) Program

As part of the business outcome focus of the Tech Pro Community, HPE Is rolling out in June a new ASE hybrid IT architect certification.

That certification – which includes skills across server, storage and networking- is aimed at giving partners the hands on skills they need to architect a solution in a multicloud environment.

HPE is also poised to release new solutions based Master ASE certifications beginning in the second half of this year. Those Master ASE certification will include new skill sets including cloud; hybrid cloud; edge solutions; software defined; real time analytics; and artificial intelligence.

The new certifications push the boundaries beyond the traditional siloed approach to technology with a focus across a full panoply of digital transformation solutions.

The Solution Architect Portal Experience

HPE has created a single online dashboard for solutions architects in the Tech Pro Community that includes a wide variety of training and continuous learning resources.

"We call it the Solution Architect Experience designed by solution architects for solution architects," said Beneda. "One of the reasons I am so excited is we are finally pulling everything into one place to make it easy for the solution architect who is very busy in front of the customer all day. This makes it easy for them to get what they need right at their finger tips."

Key to that single solution architect portal experience is a business outcome skill set that moves beyond the traditional server, storage and networking product certifications, said Beneda.

"You need a baseline across all the areas of IT in order to operate in this new hybrid cloud world," said Beneda. "What we are providing is an on ramp for server, storage and network specialists to tune up their skill sets to add value in this new hybrid IT customer context."

Changing The World One Customer At A Time

So just how critical are the Tech Pro Community elite solution architects in a business outcome driven IT market?

"We're moving into a time when solution architects are going to rule the world," said Beneda, speaking about the solutions impact of the new era solution architects. "It's super exciting. There are a lot of young fresh out of university (solution architects) and they are starting to understand they can make a dent in the universe. They can change the world with the architectures they bring to their customer. They are super excited about changing the world one customer at a time. It is really inspiring to be with this group and to be in a place where we can give them the fuel, let them loose, let them go change things and make an impact. It's hugely fun."